apodictic
by The Scarlett Ribbon
Summary: Beneath the cold mask of the Avenger, beats but the heart of a child - and a child's first instinct is to love. Even Uchiha Sasuke is no exception.
1. Affection

**title: apodictic **

**characters: Sasuke, Team 7**

**pairing: SasuSaku**

**prompt: affection **

apodictic

He rises up out of the dark, pain flaring in sharp needle points all throughout his body. Eyelids heavy, the world is slow to come into focus. The air smells damp and salty, a fine mist pressing in on his skin until something like a chill is settled in his bones.

There is a weight on his chest and from around him comes the sound of sobbing.

"S-Sasuke-kun…."

Sasuke? Is that his name?

Something hot and wet hits his face and for a moment, in his befuddled daze, he thinks of summer rain and his mother calling him in from the yard, her eyes fluttering between him and the bedsheets hanging on the line.

But mother is dead – so who is this person sobbing his name as though their very life depends on it?

Slowly, Sasuke opens his eyes. The only thing he can see is pink.

"S-S-Sasuke-k-kun!"

It is Sakura's head on his chest, her thin arms wrapped around his bloody torso, that is weighing him down. He can feel the sobs that wrack her body radiating through her skin against his own.

"Sakura…"

Her name on his lips is something like a sigh, a gasp of air in startled lungs. Immediately her head snaps up and he is greeted with watery green eyes, tremulous hope shining obliquely through.

For the briefest of moments, it is this which stuns him into silence.

It hits him so powerfully in that split second – that in all the years since _that night_, Sakura Haruno is the first person to genuinely care whether he lives or dies. Sakura, who is immature and clever and _normal, _is crying and she is crying for him.

That light coming back into her green, green eyes – all for him.

Something shifts then, so slow and unremarkable, that Sasuke doesn't even notice. But it is in this moment that Sakura Haruno is re-allotted from her place in a nameless, faceless crowd and fitted somewhere new.

Naruto was the first to stand out, alone, in a quiet corner of Sasuke's mind. _Rival, teammate, friend. _

Sakura is the second, but her place in the gravitational field of his existence is a lot harder to define.

* * *

><p><strong>notes: I don't know. Procrastination. I have 4 assignments due this month and 48, 000 words of NaNoWriMo left to write and THIS CAME OUT INSTEAD. ALSO. I am re-watching Roswell cos I am a dork and I loved that shit when I was a kid. Yeeees. <strong>

**notes2: I want to go home. I miss my friends and my double bed and my mummy. I AM A HOMEBOD. I LIKE TO BE WITH PEOPLE WHO LOVE ME, KAY? :(**


	2. Chance

**title: apodictic**

**characters: sasuke, sakura**

**pairing: sasuksaku**

**prompt: chance**

apodictic

He sees her just once.

Just once, in all those years between a moonlit night and an explosion in the dark, catacombs of sound – and it is purely by chance. An accident really; a beautiful gasoline rainbow of a snatched moment in time.

Sasuke is fourteen when he sees Sakura Haruno again and afterwards, he pretends it never happened.

* * *

><p>Sometimes, Sasuke is allowed out of Sound on his own. Insane and power hungry as he may be, Orochimaru is not stupid. He knows that you do not own something by locking it up in a cage and throwing away the key. The real test lies in setting the bird free – and so Orochimaru lets him go as he pleases, because he knows, in the end, that he will always come back. It is on one of these insignificant excursion that is happens and later Sasuke will not be able to recall where he was, or what he was doing there.<p>

_(Liar. You were on the border of Fire country, because you miss the smell of green leaves and summer sunshine, don't you Sasuke-chan? You just stood there for hours, in the shadows, taking in the smell of _home_ -)_

He remembers it in exquisite, excruciating detail. How he stood in the shadows like a ghost and out of nowhere – out of nowhere came a flash of pink.

It is her. He knows it before he even fully turns around – and there she is. His chest feels tight, heart banging against his ribcage. But it's okay, because his presence, his chakra is masked so he won't be found, he won't be _found _and there will be no tears and no green, green eyes and no more proclamations of love –

What there is instead is this; Sakura's soft footfalls, light and dainty upon the earth, hot summer sunshine weaving through the strands of her hair. There is smooth, unblemished skin and large, sparkling eyes. There is Sakura standing ten feet away from him, quiet contentment curving the soft line of her mouth as she walks across the clearing. She is taller and thinner, but Sasuke ignores the changes, looks only for the things that remain the same. Sasuke has eyes only for Sakura as he knows her – anything else is too painful to contemplate in her presence.

"Hey, Forehead! Wait up!"

The moment is shattered before he has a chance to do anything stupid, like stepping forward out of the darkness. Out of the line of trees ahead, a blonde haired blur launches herself at Sakura's back, laughter loud and exuberant on the air. Sakura turns, grinning and rolling her eyes at Yamanaka Ino. A little way behind them strolls Nara Shikamaru, his eyes riveted on the two girls.

"Troublesome," he grunts at them.

Sakura's smile is blinding. "Hurry up slowpoke," she calls and Sasuke starts at the sound of her voice. There is a familiarity between the three of them that cuts at something deep, deep inside. He bristles, eyes narrowed and scoffs. The trio pass him, unknowing and untroubled and even though Sasuke has already dismissed the matter of no importance, something in him keeps his feet glued to their spot on the ground, until he can no longer make out the white circle on Sakura's back and they have all but disappeared.

His heart is still pounding erratically, like there is a fluttering bird trapped beneath his ribcage.

* * *

><p>It is only by chance that he sees Sakura in those three years between his abandonment of the village and their confrontation at one of Orochimaru's many bases. Sasuke shakes it off and goes back to Sound and vengeance and cruelty like nothing has happened.<p>

But on the highest shelf of the dusty vault that hides everything Sasuke was before he became the Avenger, fourteen year old Sakura sits amid the dust and waits. Sasuke doesn't tell anyone.

* * *

><p><strong>notes: i don't even know. think i've given up on nanowrimo because stuff like this keeps popping up in my brain.<strong>

**notes2: LONDON LONDONLONDONLONDONLONDON. YES. **


	3. Bench

**title: apodictic**

**characters: Sasuke, Sakura**

**pairing: SasuSaku**

**prompt: bench**

**dedication: to princessofd, who has stuck with me since chapter eight of **_**the butterfly effect. **_**this one is for you. **

_Apodictic _

He will never admit it to anyone, but leaving Sakura on that bench is the hardest thing he has ever done. His actions, his decision to incapacitate her – the helpless way her spine collapsed in on itself after he hit the vulnerable spot at the back of her neck – took all his resolve.

The night was almost silent. He remembers how the passing of cloud in front of the moon turned the entire world to hushed darkness. Sasuke had known from the moment he saw her blocking his path what he would have to do to remove her from it.

As he plucked her out of her forwards descent and settled her carefully onto the bench that sat beside them, her tears left a small, warm trail on the bare skin of his arms. The reappearing moonlight washed her features and pale hair to soft silver.

"_I love you with all my heart!" _

For the tiniest of moments, time had stopped and his hand rested very gently against her damp cheek.

Time stopped, because it was Sakura he was leaving behind – Sakura and life in Konoha and a whole future that he would never get to have because he was choosing the path of vengeance.

Hesitation. In that split second of startled time, it paralysed him body and soul.

But Sasuke did not waver. He never wavers, not once he sets his mind and heart and soul on something and just this once, he is not going to be weak. Vengeance, he decides, time and again, has always been his reason for living.

Later, he remembers, he will fight Naruto at the Valley of the End and leave him lying on the ground, soaked in blood and water – his own inability to keep a promise. Sasuke hesitated there too, for far, far longer, but it was in the tearing of his hand away from Sakura's unhappy face – the whisper of his fingertips against her skin - that he reached the point of no turning back.

* * *

><p><strong>notes: the tenses are all over the place. i know. i guess i was kind of experimenting. also, no kiss because i don't think that in any conceivable way would that have happened. <strong>

**notes2: TOTALLY GOING TO FAIL FRIDAY'S FLAT INSPECTION BUT I AM NOT CLEANING THE WHOLE DAMN COMMUNAL AREA ON MY OWN. I AM NOT THEIR FUCKING MOTHER. GOD. **


	4. Birthday

**title: apodictic**

**characters: Sasuke, Sakura**

**pairing(s): SasuSaku**

**prompt: birthday**

**dedication: the fluffernutter sandwich. yes. it is as disgusting as it sounds. i need new friends, clearly. **

_Apodictic_

Training for the third round of the chunnin exam with Kakashi completely consumes him. Sasuke's every waking moment is preoccupied with thoughts of training; with equations and _kata _and an elusive spark in his fingertips that flickers to life, only to die in the space it takes for his heart to skip a beat. His muscles ache and his skin is bruised – and this is probably the most gruelling thing he has ever done in his entire life. Every day the hot Konoha sun burns down on the back of his neck until the sensitive skin turns an irritated red. The curse mark pulses every time he draws on his chakra and it is only by sheer willpower that he keeps the black tomoe caged behind the mark that his sensei put upon him.

He feels branded – once by Orochimaru in a shadowed forest and second by Konoha in a dark and lonely room far below the ground. Nobody asked him. Nobody ever asks him.

But Sasuke keeps his mouth shut, because although he remembers the intoxicating rush of power that surged through him when he awoke, he also remembers the sickening crack of an older boys arms, the look of wild fear in his own teammate's eyes.

"_Stop!" _Sakura had screamed and in her expression, he had seen himself at seven years old staring at _that man, _as he stood in the moonlit street with the faintest smatterings of blood on his face.

So Sasuke devotes himself so his training with such ruthless single-minded intensity that he almost forgets the horrible dreams that follow him into darkness every night and the things that happened in that forest, just a few weeks ago.

He even forgets his own birthday, because the only one left to remind him is himself these days – and since there is no one to watch him blow out his birthday candles, he couldn't care less what one more year on this earth means, unless he can measure it in how much stronger he has grown.

So it is a surprise – more than a surprise, it leaves him stunned and almost breathless the day he staggers back to his one-bedroomed apartment full of empty spaces and hollow silences, so exhausted he can barely function and finds it changed.

The floors have been swept, the laundry done and folded meticulously away. The windows are clean and sparkling, the bathroom spotless, his bedsheets changed. There is food in the fridge – vegetables and meat and all the things to replenish a body sorely punished by the sort of training he has been putting it through for the last three weeks. On the table, still softly steaming, is a tray of tomato rice balls, homemade and very carefully made.

A fluttering of paper catches his attention; _Happy Birthday _is written in small, feminine cursive. There is no name attached, but Sasuke knows who is behind the thoughtful gesture. Because it _is _thoughtful, he will realise as the years pass. Better than a pretty trinket, or a useless sentimental gift - she has tried, in the only way she knows how, to take care of him.

Sakura is always trying to take care of him.

Sasuke bites into one of the rice balls; it is very slightly salty but he almost likes it better for the imperfection and chews it slowly, savouring the sweetness of the tomato, the plain and solid taste of the rice.

It is the first birthday since he was seven years old, that he hasn't felt completely and utterly alone.

* * *

><p><strong>notes: purely imagined scenario. you can see what I'm really thinking about when I'm supposed to be taking notes in class.<strong>** seriously. today I was so bored in my lecture that I spent the whole two hours teaching myself how to write lefthanded. I think higher education is wasted on me. **

**notes2: guys, guys GUYS, you don't even want to know what totally disgusting picture was posted outside my flat door today. NOT WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE AT 8 IN THE MORNING. I swear, living on the ground floor is an invitation for harassment from everyone else in my building. **


	5. Lost

**title:apodictic**

**pairing: SasukeSakura**

**prompt: lost**

_apodictic_

"Where did you go?"

She says it breathlessly. Bitterly. Sasuke cannot see her, cannot see anything actually, but he doesn't have to. He knows, with a certainty he cannot name, that there are tears in her eyes because he can hear them in her voice. He can hear, too, the clink of the chains that bind her to the wall.

He imagines her for just a moment, clothes crumpled and dirty, hair wild and green eyes wide. He wonders if there is blood on her somewhere. There is always blood now.

He didn't make her bleed last time and that is a curious thing. He meant to. The chidori crackled to life in his palm and the whole world spun sickeningly, colours bleached and muted and is that her startled scream he recalls?

Sasuke doesn't answer her. The bandages across his eyes bother him. He wonders when Madara will let him take them off and what he is going to do when he does. Burn the world probably. Burn something.

"I keep looking for you and looking for you and – and you're not there," Sakura continues and that despair, that complete and utter hopelessness…he likes that, even as it pulls at something beneath his ribcage, pulls and pulls until he thinks the bones might snap. "You're not in there anymore, are you?"

_I'm not even listening,_ he thinks about saying and it tastes like cruelty on his tongue, but he can't kill her face on and is it really worth the effort anyway? He can just as soon as tune her out.

"You – you disappeared on me, Sasuke," she accuses, except not really. It is a statement of fact. Because he is not the boy she used to know – not the boy she claimed to have fallen in love with. That boy is dead, isn't he, Sasuke-kun? He died in the hollows of Sound, with Orochimaru's tongue flicking the shell of his ear and the screams and wails of the experiments stabbing him in his sleep. That Sasuke sought darkness and look – he's drowned himself in it and isn't it wonderful? Isn't it wonderful, Sakura-chan?

The sound of her sobs can almost be mistaken for hysterical laughter. Maniacal. They call him a maniac now – a psychopath. Maybe he is. Maybe it doesn't even matter anymore.

"Sasuke," Sakura whispers and he has the feeling that her hand is stretching across the space towards him, fingers scrabbling at the empty air. The chains hold her back and he could move to meet her half-way, but he doesn't.

"S-Sasuke, where did you _go_?" _Why won't you come back? _

Sasuke sits in the corner of the cell and says nothing. It's easier that way.

* * *

><p><strong>notes: this is possibly the most depressing thing i have ever written. way to get into the holiday spirit, Scarlett…<strong>

**notes2: headache. stabbing pain. somebody tell my flatmates to shut the fuck up before i murder them. or hide all their cutlery. **

**please don't fav/alert without reviewing.**

**hate to say it but guys, you know who you are. **


	6. Water

**title: apodictic**

**characters: Sasuke, Sakura**

**pairing: SasukeSakura**

**prompt: water**

_apodictic_

She doesn't touch him.

Sasuke sits upright in the hospital bed, shoulders stiff, back ramrod straight. Pale sunlight streams in through the open window and past filmy net curtains, illuminating everything in a soft, warm glow.

He is no stranger to silence, but he thinks he might choke on all the words he cannot find.

Last time, she peeled him apples.

Sasuke swallows hard and tries to forget all the things he has and hasn't done. He's been trying to forget a lot of things lately.

Beside him, Sakura sits quietly with her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She's started wearing her hair up, he notices; pulled back it only serves to emphasise the changes time has wrought in her. Her face is thinner, but more beautiful than he remembers. Her expression, once open to him, is guarded.

Four years span the distance between them and they've both come out on the other side of them to find each other changed. And it's all on him; the culmination of his decision, his choices, his actions – a chance meeting on a moonlit night.

Sasuke swallows again and it feels like shards of glass and regret are scraping at the hollow of his throat.

For the first time, her eyes flicker to him.

"You need water," she says quietly, gaze unwavering.

He watches as she half-turns to the nightstand and carefully pours water from a glass pitcher into a cup. His arms are too heavy for him to lift, though Sasuke tries. For a moment both of them hold the cup between them and his hand trembles so badly beneath hers that the water sloshes over the rim.

Sakura stops, steadies his hand with both of her own and their eyes meet. The touch is minimal, but the silence has been broken and her face is a little less closed to him, he thinks (hopes).

Softly, she takes the cup from him, rises to perch on the very edge of the bed and raises it to his lips.

"Here."

He swallows and the water is achingly cold, but it washes away the guilt, just for a moment.

"Thank you," Sasuke tells her softly and in her almost smile he sees the bones of the little girl he knew, that little thing he was always toughening up and trying to protect in the only way he could.

The room is hushed, but Sakura doesn't move away this time.

And Sasuke knows it is a start.

* * *

><p><strong>notes: because I find myself feeling strangely hopeful for them right now<strong>

**notes2: KISHI STOP TROLLING US WITH SASU-CHAN CAMEOS. **


	7. Ribbon

**title: apodictic **

**character(s): Sasuke, Sakura**

**pairing: SasuSaku**

**prompt: ribbon**

_apodictic_

He gives her a ribbon for her thirteenth birthday.

Sasuke doesn't understand Sakura's preoccupation with her forehead, or why it is necessary for her to always tie her hair back from her face, but he still notices that she does it. Blue, he thinks one day, when Kakashi has them refining their chakra control during training, is not the colour he would have chosen for her. It looks nice enough, he supposes, but green would suit her better somehow.

So when her birthday rolls around, Sasuke remembers that thought as he spies a stall of pretty fabrics in the market. There are fans and kimono's of luxurious, exquisite satins but the ribbon he picks up is a simple thing – apple green and a soft silk, almost the exact colour of her eyes.

* * *

><p>He leaves it on her windowsill as the stars come out, folded over and wrapped in pale tissue paper. The yellow light of her room spills onto the sill through the open window, the curtains not yet drawn. He doesn't leave a note.<p>

* * *

><p>"You…" he gasps on the battlefield, the blood in his throat choking him, spilling out past his lips as Sakura leans over him. She is wrist deep in his internal organs, eyes hard and shiny. "You kept it."<p>

A trembling hand gestures towards the green ribbon she wears in her hair, spotted and stained with blood.

She'd kept it all this time, he realises, dark shadows creeping into the corners of his vision and making the world swim. The battlefield around them is a torrent of screaming death in his ears.

"…Sakura…"

"Shut up!" she snaps at him, but he hears the crack in her voice, the tears she's barely holding back. "Just save your strength – I'm going to save you, Sasuke! _I'm going to save you!" _

He can feel her chakra, how it surges frantically through his body trying to knit skin and sinew and cells back together, but it's too late. He knows it – he knows that she knows it too.

Some things can't be fixed. Madara has seen to that.

The words rise in his throat and he chokes on his own shredded organs to force them out, the one absolute truth he will ever give her.

"You – you already…did."

The green of her widening eyes is the last thing he sees.

* * *

><p>When he wakes, his insides feel like they've been scraped raw. The cool night air smells like flowers and disinfectant – the steady beat of his heart on a monitor convincing him that he is, in fact, alive.<p>

He can barely lift his heavy lids but he can feel that someone has wrapped silk around his loosely curled fist, wrapped it as tightly as the bandages around his torso. It feels like a promise.

Sasuke doesn't have to look to know the ribbon is green.

* * *

><p><strong>note: idek anymore. <strong>


	8. Jealousy

**title: apodictic**

**characters: Sasuke, Sakura, Naruto**

**pairing: SasukeSakura**

**prompt: jealousy**

**dedication: to **_**golden doe, **_**because she's awesome and never complains about me spamming her inbox. also, for giving me a prompt when i am utterly lacking in creativity and imagination. thanks, lovely. **

_apodictic_

He's felt it before, jealousy.

It's a bitter taste, an angry thrumming deep down inside, curling resentment in the space between his bones like vapour, or maybe smoke - a creeping poison that chokes. Childhood was spent with it hiding in the miniscule pauses of his heartbeat, the soft _thumpthump _and then –

It's a quiet, insistent voice he always tried to ignore, but it made his hands curl into angry fists anyway as he stood in the ether, watching father and nii-chan's retreating backs, the uchiwa fan growing smaller and mocking him.

_Why do you like him better than me?_

That all died when he came home to find corpses in the streets; the brother he thought he had is dead because he never was. That dream died with everyone else and cold bodies mouldering in the ground can't love anyone, least of all their killer.

Sasuke is not loved, but at least, neither is Itachi. It's the only way the playing field has been levelled.

And then the world tilts on its axis.

"Thank you for saving me," Sakura says and her green eyes are so, _so _soft. There is care and affection in her gaze, and gratitude too. The air is still.

* * *

><p>"I didn't," Sasuke says, recalling sand and a red-pink blur falling falling and Naruto on the ground, barely able to move but the monster gone.<p>

Sasuke is never the hero.

"It was Naruto."

* * *

><p>And the angry thudding in his chest is creeping back, his hands clenched into fists and Sakura who belongs to him, who cried over his body and held him through the agony of the curse mark, her small hands the only real thing in the world –<p>

Sakura smiles at the orange-clad boy up ahead and it is soft and everything warm and gentle and _his. _

Sakura gives the smile she's only ever shown to him, to someone else.

Jealousy is a snake-strike biting deep, deep down and suddenly Sasuke is angry. Threatened, because until now he has always been the only thing Sakura sees.

_You're supposed to like _me _best. _

* * *

><p><strong>notes: that moment of joy when you finally defeat <strong>_**Wide Sargasso Sea. **_

**notes2: out of milk again. i have a feeling one of my flatmates has been pilfering it while i wasn't looking. grrrr**

**notes3: someone wanna pop to the shop and get me some? it's too cold to go outside :(**

**Also, if you can come up with a prompt for future chapters, feel free. i'll see what i can do. **


	9. Ketchup

**title: apodictic**

**characters: Sasuke, Sakura, Naruto, Kakashi**

**pairing: SasuSaku**

**prompt: ketchup**

**dedication: to **_**Kaze and Kiba, **_**who is completely lovely and so much fun to giggle with. sorry it's so late!**

* * *

><p><em>apodictic<em>

* * *

><p>They don't have tomatoes in the small, impoverished village somewhere between the Land of Snow and the Land of Fire. It's been two weeks. Two weeks since he's eaten the last of his favourite fruit and although Sasuke has never complained, it's beginning to wear on his nerves.<p>

Naruto, too, is annoying.

"Man," the blond whines, as they turn away from the small market. "I can't believe they don't have ramen here, Kaka-sensei! HOW DO THESE PEOPLE LIVE."

Slowly, they resume the road and leave the village behind them.

"Well, Naruto, some people are dependent on more than one food substance. Take this as a learning curve. You may even discover something you like _more _than you like ramen."

"SACRILAGE."

And that's how it's been for the past four days on the road. Sakura and Kakashi, at least, have been their usual selves, but already he wants to be rid of them all – to go home, to the grocer and get some damn tomatoes, because packet rations should never be eaten for more than two days in a row.

"Cheer up, Sasuke," Kakashi says, strolling ahead with that stupid orange book an inch from his nose. "Only three more days until we reach Konohagakure."

It takes all his strength of will not to throw a kunai at his sensei. That, or pinch the bridge of his nose at their utter idiocy.

* * *

><p>"Alright, let's make camp for the night," Kakashi announces at last, finally relenting when their feet are dragging and their eyes slowly slipping shut. It's been a mostly uphill walk for the last three hours and the sky is dark, stars glittering up ahead. Sakura has stumbled twice in the last half hour – it's beyond time to set up came, Sasuke thinks crossly.<p>

When Kakashi orders him to go collect firewood, he willingly stomps off into the trees. For a five minutes of solitude that does not stretch far enough before he has to go back to camp, fire wood in his arms. But before he reaches the last line of trees before the camp, someone hisses his name.

"Sasuke!"

He turns, eyebrow raised in her direction questioningly, and Sakura just smiles a secret smile that makes him think of the stripes of sunlight that would shine through the leaves on the trees onto the forest floor. Even dead on her feet, she manages to make it look effortless. He admires that, a little. Smiling is a concept that is foreign to him now, and even when he finds something amusing, or pleasing his face is reluctant to show it.

"You should be resting," he says shortly, and the smile widens. Sakura shuffles over to him, takes half the sticks from his arms and presses something into his hands.

"Don't tell Naruto," she whispers, turning back towards their camp without waiting for him. "Sorry, it's not as good as the real thing.

When she's gone, he looks down at the ketchup sachets clutched in his hand and understands that she picked these up at the village just for him. He'll never admit it, not even to himself, but that one act of kindness is the only bearable thing about the entire mission.

* * *

><p><strong>notes: short, but i don't care. <strong>

**notes2: i think this is as close as i can get to fluff. oh god, what is wrong with me. **

**notes3: i missed writing for this. sasuke's head is a fun place to be. **


	10. first snow

**title: apodictic**

**characters: Sasuke, Sakura**

**pairing: sasusaku**

**prompt: first snow**

**dedication: my pen pal **_**Sakura's Unicorn. **_**i don't think you'll ever realise how much of **_**TBE **_**was written with your approval in mind. continue to be amazing; I'm sorry it's taken me over a year to post this. **

* * *

><p><em>apodictic <em>

* * *

><p>The first snow strikes unexpectedly, catching the whole of Konoha by surprise. One minute, it's an ordinary clouded day, an unpleasant chill in the air – the next there's snowfall, thick and obliterating and Sasuke is caught in the middle of it.<p>

Then - a window flying open, a flurry of pink whipped about in the snow blurred wind, and Sakura is calling his name.

"Sasuke-kun!"

What follows is a blur of motion; a beckoning hand and his own body moving without pause for thought. His feet hit the solid surface of the balcony. Sakura pulls him into the warmth of her room, with gentle hands and moves to shut the window on the freezing winds.

"It's really turning into a storm out there," she says wonderingly, face pressed up against the glass.

"Hn."

Her room isn't the typically girly thing he might have expected, if he'd ever wasted time imagining it. Wooden floorboards, a single wall painted in a soft apple green colour – and everywhere, little odds and ends that mark this room as hers. Tiny bottles of nail varnish on her bedside table, a tangle of ribbons draped over her mirror, photographs and drawings tacked to the walls. He moves slightly to inspect a stack of books on the floor by her bed. Classics and romances, mostly, but there's a battered copy of the ninja rulebook, too.

As if sensing his scrutiny, Sakura turns and smiles sheepishly. "Sorry, Sasuke-kun. I know you probably have places to be today."

He shrugs. "It's not your fault the snow hit, Sakura."

It hits him, then, that she's not wearing her usual red dress. Instead, his teammate is swamped by a baggy cream-coloured sweater and comfy grey leggings. She is wearing slippers and her hair, unbrushed, is shoved up in a sloppy ponytail.

She hums apologetically, glancing around her room. "I don't have anything you can change into, but I can make some tea if you're cold."

There is no point denying it; he knows Sakura has already taken note of his shivering, and there is snow melting in his hair.

"Thanks."

Sasuke wishes he was more gifted with words, so that when she smiles at him like this – slow and easy, a smile reserved just for him – he can feel he has honestly done something to deserve her devotion.

* * *

><p>Years later he will recall this – the lilt to her smile, the careful way she poured the tea and gave him warmth to cradle in his hands – on the nights when he cannot sleep. The first snow will always belong to her.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>notes: surprise bitches, i bet you thought you'd seen the last of me (and this fic)<strong>

**notes2: i need to start writing this more i feel rusty in the sasusaku feels**

**notes3: yesterday i fell over in a wet, muddy field and an old couple stopped to laugh at me**


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